Dozens Die In Attack On Mexican Indians

SAN CRISTOBAL DE LAS CASAS, Mexico — A band of gunmen rampaged through a refugee camp near a southern Mexican town, opening deadly fire on men, women and children in the bloodiest violence since the Zapatista uprising in 1994, authorities and witnesses said Tuesday.

At least 45 Mayan Indians were killed and 20 others wounded in Monday's attack near Acteal, in part of an impoverished region torn in a conflict between pro-government forces and Zapatista rebels in a struggle for power in Chiapas state.

Four men were arrested, the Chiapas state government said without further details late Tuesday.

One suspect was receiving treatment for unspecified injuries at a hospital in Tuxtla Gutierrez, the state capital, the government statement said.

The attack, which survivors said was a calculated assault by Indians who support the government in a village crowded with their political rivals, brought swift condemnation from President Ernesto Zedillo.

In a national broadcast Tuesday afternoon, he called the attack a "cruel, absurd and unacceptable criminal act" and ordered the federal attorney general to investigate, sidelining senior state officials from his own political party.

"We must listen and respond to the clamor of all Mexicans for the full clarification of the facts and, without a doubt, the full weight of the law for those responsible," Zedillo said. Later, the president ordered additional federal troops into the area.

But Samuel Ruiz, bishop of the Roman Catholic diocese of San Cristobal de las Casas, called the bloodshed a "massacre foretold" and blamed the state and federal governments. He said officials had ignored warnings of impending violence.

In Washington, the State Department called the killings a "horrific development" and urged the Mexican government to ensure appropriate protection for its citizens in the region.

Negotiations between the government and the Indian rebels broke down last year. Clashes between rebel supporters and the recognized government have taken place over the past seven months, killing 30 Tzotzil Indian peasants and leaving nearly 7,000 homeless in a region where landless peasants have clashed with land barons for centuries.

However, local observers in the region speculated that the Zapatistas, who are largely surrounded by government forces in remote areas, were unlikely to have been the target of the attack. They said the violence may have been the product of local rivalry between supporters of the PRI and the Party of the Democratic Revolution, its leftist rival.

More than 300 people, both allies and opponents of the government, have been killed in the region since 1994. Tensions continue to simmer because the government has not reached a peace accord with the Zapatista guerrillas whose strongholds are in the area.

Survivors provided details of the attack Tuesday.

"They came in shooting at about 11 o'clock, and we tried to flee into the mountains," Agustin Perez, a resident of Acteal said. "Some came in from one side, and others came in from another side. We were so frightened, we tried to hide by the banks of a little river that runs nearby. But our children started to cry, and the attackers heard them and came after us shooting."

Mexican Red Cross officials said nine men, 21 women and 15 children, including a newborn, were killed. Reported among the dead were nine members of a single family of 12. More than 20 other people were reported wounded.

According to survivors' accounts, several dozen gunmen armed with assault rifles and other sophisticated weapons surrounded the town and moved in shooting into a cluster of makeshift dwellings belonging to Indians from several other villages who are sympathizers of the Zapatista rebels, and who were driven from their homes in recent weeks in violent confrontations with pro-government paramilitary bands.

Some villagers alleged that some of the attackers, who wore ski masks or red handkerchiefs over their faces, were members of local factions of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI. Party officials in Chiapas and Mexico City denied the allegation and hastened to condemn the violence.

"Many of (the local paramilitary members) call themselves PRI members, but we don't recognize them," Juan Carlos Gomez, the ruling party's Chiapas state leader, told an interviewer on national radio. "No organization involved in violence can claim membership, not only in our party, but in any party."

At the site of the massacre all that remained was the wreckage of a simple camp that had served as a home for the past couple of months to around 200 Indians who had fled to the mountain area to escape political violence in their own villages elsewhere in Chiapas.

Bloodstains were visible in the mud. Clothes and shoes lay strewn on the ground near shelters made of banana leaves and wooden poles in a clearing on a mountain slope.